[PwrMac.com]

I decided to write about my "slow" G5. I just found it frustrating that people are quick to point out G5's (and other Power Macs for that matter) are obsolete. Here is the link to my blog:

http://www.pwrmac.com/2008/10/01/rea...d-speed-freak/

I have some info about upgrading and three videos (My machine booting, using cover flow, and a stress test). I think the stress test is kinda cool.. let me know what you think.

[bballe336]

I didn't really read your blog post, however I will say that I think the G5's are obsolete. If you do anything related to processing power PPC macs are obsolete.

[PwrMac.com]

Why not? It proves that even under heavy load they still hold their own. Whats the basis of you thinking that?

[Eug]

If speed really matters, then G5s really are obsolete. I got rid of my G5 iMac years ago specifically because of its (lack of) speed.

I kept some G4s (Power Mac Cubes, iMac, iBook), but that's because I like their aesthetics.

[bballe336]

Originally Posted by PwrMac.com 

Why not? It proves that even under heavy load they still hold their own. Whats the basis of you thinking that?

They don't hold their own at all. The modern machines that took the place of the G5's are much faster.

At an internship I did earlier this summer they had me using a 1.8ghz dual G5 with 2 gigs of ram, it was so slow I could barely use it. And all I was doing was web surfing, and a little bit of diagnostic and disc burning work. My macbook pro is so much faster than that machine that after 2 days I just started bringing in my macbook pro and running it in closed lid mode.

I can't imagine trying to do any real work on a computer that slow.

[mduell]

You haven't really demonstrated anything that CPU intensive; your multitasking benchmark would depend more on RAM. There are some CPU bound benchmarks where the G5s are competitive, but they're rather niche. The Mac mini has a lower hard drive, but is generally faster for CPU bound tasks.

[PwrMac.com]

Originally Posted by mduell 

You haven't really demonstrated anything that CPU intensive; your multitasking benchmark would depend more on RAM. There are some CPU bound benchmarks where the G5s are competitive, but they're rather niche. The Mac mini has a lower hard drive, but is generally faster for CPU bound tasks.

Well, I'm just curious, what do you or the average user user daily that is so processor intensive that my machine couldn't handle?

[Catfish_Man]

Average daily users are uninteresting for speed comparisons. A G4 would be (and was) adequate for almost all cases. For me, compiling WebKit is my big time sink, and the Intel switch sped that up immensely. I'm not certain if I would use that for overall comparison though. Compiling is ideally suited to highlight Core 2's strong points vs the G5 (integer/branchy code performance), and avoid the G5's strong points (streaming floating point).

Fundamentally, good performance comparisons are hard, and good performance comparisons that isolate one system component are much harder. Since we don't have the opportunity to custom-build Macs, it's generally best *for users* to look at the system as a whole running the applications they care about. Isolating components of a system is more interesting from a developer point of view, or for users looking at upgrading parts of a system (e.g. "hmm. Our performance scales almost linearly with IO speed. Maybe we should buy faster drives!").

[PwrMac.com]

Originally Posted by Catfish_Man 

Average daily users are uninteresting for speed comparisons. A G4 would be (and was) adequate for almost all cases. For me, compiling WebKit is my big time sink, and the Intel switch sped that up immensely. I'm not certain if I would use that for overall comparison though. Compiling is ideally suited to highlight Core 2's strong points vs the G5 (integer/branchy code performance), and avoid the G5's strong points (streaming floating point).

Fundamentally, good performance comparisons are hard, and good performance comparisons that isolate one system component are much harder. Since we don't have the opportunity to custom-build Macs, it's generally best *for users* to look at the system as a whole running the applications they care about. Isolating components of a system is more interesting from a developer point of view, or for users looking at upgrading parts of a system (e.g. "hmm. Our performance scales almost linearly with IO speed. Maybe we should buy faster drives!").

I wasn't debating that G5's are fast. I am jut pointing out they aren't as obsolete as many think. Check out the last video on the blog. I'm running 10 applications, some of which are decently processor intensive, and my system stays responsive. I just think its interesting to see...

[PwrMac.com]

fixed the link issue:

http://www.pwrmac.com/2008/10/01/rea...d-speed-freak/

[Eug]

Originally Posted by PwrMac.com 

Well, I'm just curious, what do you or the average user user daily that is so processor intensive that my machine couldn't handle?

This was my laptop, vs a 2.0 GHz G5 (single-core). ie. At the same clock speed, my laptop was 3.5X as fast, despite having only twice the cores.



Thus, I replaced the iMac G5 with a Core 2 Duo iMac. I look forward to getting a quad iMac in 2009 or 2010.

[PwrMac.com]

Originally Posted by Eug 

This was my laptop, vs a 2.0 GHz G5 (single-core). ie. At the same clock speed, my laptop was 4X as fast.



Thus, I replaced the iMac G5 with a Core 2 Duo iMac.

My machine is a dual processor, which is more of a fair fight. (2 cores in the macbook, 1 processor in the iMac) How often do you encode h.264?

[Eug]

Yeah, but what I'm saying is 2.0 GHz of a Core Duo is equal to 3.5 GHz of a dual G5. Therefore, my (2.5 year old laptop) is twice as fast as your dual G5 tower in this app.

And my iMac Core 2 Duo 2.33 is much faster. And even then, it's still not fast enough IMO. If I do a 2-pass encode, it still takes roughly 4 hours to complete, depending on the settings and the length of the movie. Your machine would take around 10 hours, give or take.

I encode H.264 fairly regularly. I am converting many of my DVDs to H.264, for streaming to my Xbox 360 and for playback on my iPhone.

[PwrMac.com]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Yeah, but what I'm saying is 2.0 GHz of a Core Duo is equal to 3.5 GHz of a dual G5. Therefore, my (2.5 year old laptop) is twice as fast as your dual G5 tower in this app.

And my iMac Core 2 Duo 2.33 is much faster. And even then, it's still not fast enough IMO. If I do a 2-pass encode, it still takes roughly 4 hours to complete, depending on the settings and the length of the movie. Your machine would take around 10 hours, give or take.

I encode H.264 fairly regularly. I am converting many of my DVDs to H.264, for streaming to my Xbox 360 and for playback on my iPhone.

How long is the clip in question? I two pass code everything, I'm currently converting a movie as I type this. A faster mac might benefit you, but it doesnt mean my computer is slow.

[Eug]

Your computer is slow by today's standards. Is it acceptable for you? Yes, and that's great for you, cuz you don't need to spend more money for something faster.

However, by today's standards, a tower with that sort of speed is simply slow.

And trust me, I know slow, as I have G4 machines too. Those are REALLY slow. But for some basic stuff, they're fine. In fact, I use a G4 1.25 as my main Mac at work, cuz it's all I need there. But that doesn't change the fact that it's slow.

[PwrMac.com]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Your computer is slow by today's standards. Is it acceptable for you? Yes, and that's great for you, cuz you don't need to spend more money for something faster.

However, by today's standards, a tower with that sort of speed is simply slow.

And trust me, I know slow, as I have G4 machines too. Those are REALLY slow. But for some basic stuff, they're fine. In fact, I use a G4 1.25 as my main Mac at work, cuz it's all I need there. But that doesn't change the fact that it's slow.

I just have to disagree. Yes my computer is slower then yours, I already said that. The title of the article is (Real World) Speed Freak. In the video I'm using Google Earth, Windows XP and Windows Safari under emulation in Virtual PC 7, Aperture, and the list goes on, the other apps are less resource hungry. Doing all that my machine remains responsive, and my workflow wouldn't be impeded. h.264 encoding is slower, no doubt. The point is, it "does" everything fast.

[imitchellg5]

I don't think the dual processor G5's are obsolete, but the single processor ones are a little outmoded. IMO the quads are plenty powerful for most things these days.

VPC7 was never fast on ANYTHING.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

VPC7 was never fast on ANYTHING.

Indeed. His statement is suspect as soon as VPC was mentioned.

VPC is slow as molasses on every PowerPC machine in existence.

[PwrMac.com]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Indeed. His statement is suspect as soon as VPC was mentioned.

VPC is slow as molasses on every PowerPC machine in existence.

umm.. I never said VPC was fast, I just said my system was responsive even while running Windows XP and Windows Safari. What exactly is suspect? in the video it proves my point that all of that can be running and my tower remains responsive... no suspect needed

[TomD3]

well thats great i guess anyone dumping a g5/or g5 dual i need some parts to test a unit ive got thats sposed to work i need a sata hard drive .. apcix agp 8 video card to replace the thought to be faulty 9600 uncooled 64 mb card thank you .. im outta work and connot afford to get this thing new parts and my daughter needs for school [email protected]

[tooki]

Think about it: your Power Mac G5 is about as powerful as a Mac mini or MacBook Air, but with more powerful graphics and hard disks. Will it be a well-performing machine for everyday use? Without question.

BTW, the graphics card is the main reason your Aperture test looked great -- the exposure and color adjustments you made are nearly 100% GPU-dependent, and don't load down the CPU much at all. If you'd tested CPU-intensive Aperture tasks, like export to JPEG or loading RAW files, you'd see a big difference between the G5 and a current Mac.

But for today's power users, the new machines are massively better. I went from a 1.25GHz PowerBook G4, which was showing its age (Aperture just plain sucked on that Mac). On the PowerBook, I couldn't run but a few tracks in GarageBand without having it poop out. Encoding a DVD to h.264 took around 14 hours. Mind you, I am saying that any one of those tasks would bring the PowerBook to its knees. Forget about doing them all at once.

On the Mac Pro that replaced it, I can do the h.264 encode and GarageBand playback as background tasks while blazing through Aperture. Oh, and the DVD rips complete in under 1/2 hour. I've done the same tests with two instances of Win XP running (one in Parallels, one in VMWare) as background tasks in addition to all the above, and this machine just barrels through it as if nothing.

I rip a lot of DVDs (since I got an AppleTV, so I'm ripping my entire collection into iTunes), and I have an EyeTV tuner, so I record a lot of TV shows off cable, and then let it convert those to h.264 as well. I can have both video conversions happening simultaneously, with each one going at about 70% of the speed it would if it were just one. (Neither encoder can fully load down the Mac Pro on its own, but doing both at once will. But even then, the system stays buttery smooth for anything else I want to do.)

[PwrMac.com]

Hey,

Some people were doubting me (in another forum) that my Mac could handle 1080p movies. So I recorded mine playing two at the same time. Here it goes:

http://www.pwrmac.com/2008/10/04/old...80p-just-fine/

[Eug]

"Responsive" is a relative term, and anyways, if the background apps aren't doing much, that's not saying much either. I will say though that my friend's dual 2.0 G5 is less responsive in general than my iMac Core 2 Duo.

It's fine for most people, but I would never buy one as a primary workstation if I had anything that required serious CPU power.

It's great that an older machine is fine for you. However, that doesn't mean it's a powerful machine by today's standards, cuz it just isn't.

P.S. Dunno about the rules here, but most people consider this spamming for your blog. What some of us have done is put our blogs in our sigs, or in our profiles.

Originally Posted by tooki 

Oh, and the DVD rips complete in under 1/2 hour.

A DVD rip taking 30 minutes isn't very much of an accomplishment actually. You can get that with single-core machines IIRC. FWIW, it often takes less than that with my dual-core machines.

[PwrMac.com]

Originally Posted by Eug 

P.S. Dunno about the rules here, but most people consider this spamming for your blog. What some of us have done is put our blogs in our sigs, or in our profiles.

.

I apologize if this is considered spamming. but instead of creating a post here and writing everything I had to say, I just posted it as an article on my blog. better integration with the videos too.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by PwrMac.com 

Some people were doubting me (in another forum) that my Mac could handle 1080p movies. So I recorded mine playing two at the same time. ...

Well anyone who says that is an idiot. I mean, what systems do they think the early 1080p content was edited on?!?

[tooki]

Originally Posted by Eug 

A DVD rip taking 30 minutes isn't very much of an accomplishment actually. You can get that with single-core machines IIRC. FWIW, it often takes less than that with my dual-core machines.

Sorry, I should have been clearer: by "rip", I meant ripping to h.264. Just ripping (not re-encoding) does indeed not take very long, and is limited only by the speed of the drive.

H.264 encoding, on the other hand, is massively dependent on CPU. My Mac Pro does roughly VGA-size h.264 at over 100fps, which makes a typical 2 hour movie take about 1/2 hour. A 2GHz dual-core system will take roughly realtime (i.e. 2 hours) to complete, and a single-core system more than double that (since the single-core ones were also lower GHz).

[Eug]

I assume you have a quad.

I can't wait until I can get a quad iMac. I hope to be able do 2-pass encodes in less than 90 minutes.

With my current settings (which is often higher than VGA resolution), a 2.33 GHz dual-core iMac is roughly real-time, so a 2 hour movie takes about 4 hours with 2-pass. (I don't use turbo 2-pass.)

If I can get a 4-core system at a significantly higher clockspeed, I'm thinking an hour and a half for 2-pass is likely.

[tooki]

I have an 8-core 2.8GHz, 8GB RAM, 8800GT graphics. Handbrake does a movie in iPod Hi-Rez, in turbo 2-pass, in under 1/2 hour. And as I said, because Handbrake can't fully load down the system, there's still tons of CPU left to keep the system running smooth for everything else I'm doing at the same time.

[Big Mac]

I congratulate you for the effort, PwrMac, and I welcome you to the forums. Most around here can tell you why.

[OreoCookie]

Whether a machine is fast enough or not is entirely a personal thing: my sister, for example, is an example of a standard user: light webbrowsing, e-mail, Word, Excel, that's it. Probably a netbook would suffice for her needs (although she'd be insulted, because her brothers need fancy computers and she doesn't ). People should replace computers when they need a new one for whatever reason, upgrading for upgrading's sake is pointless.

Are you unhappy about your machine's speed? Your blog post indicates that the answer is no:

My Mac does all that and remains responsive. Its four years old, and its also the third slowest G5 Power Mac ever built (only the single 1.6Ghz and 1.8Ghz models are slower). It’s funny to me that people are quick to consider old computers slow. If my Mac is slow, you’d never know it.

Stick with your machine, until you need to have it replaced. Perhaps 10.6 aka Snow Leopard is a good time to get a new machine? Or 10.7 when the new framework that Snow Leopard puts into place is actually used. JFYI, I upgrade about once every three to four years. For the time of my PhD, my university provided me with a first-gen 15" ProBook which I'm very happy with. The only thing I'm missing is the ability to install more than 3 GB RAM (I've already upgraded the harddrive from 100 GB to 250 GB which I would have preferred to do myself). I think I'll get my next machine after leaving my current job If the MacBooks get a proper graphics card (which I need for Aperture) and shed some weight, I'll probably get one and an external display. If not, I'll have to get a ProBook again. Right now, I feel no real need of upgrading, I'd much rather get a new lens for my camera or some equipment for sports.

[Big Mac]

Off-topic: What are you getting your PhD in, OC? If you don't mind sharing.

[OreoCookie]

Mathematical physics (to be precise, I have a diploma (5-year degree) in physics and I'm doing my PhD in mathematics. I'm one of those people who only needs a paper, a pen and a computer. Oh, and lots of books

[ebuddy]

To be clear, I've not done any official benchmarking and I wouldn't necessarily be able to tell you the difference between GPU and CPU intensive, but I have noticed some differences. They are not particularly favorable to the Mac Pro. I've meant to ask about this anyway, but about two months ago I picked up a dual, 2.66GHz Mac Pro and I have 5gig of RAM. I had been using a dual, 2GHz G5 prior w/ 2Gig of RAM, both using Leopard.

Some differences;
Basic
- The Mac Pro is exponentially faster at opening apps. Start-up time is a little faster maybe?

Audio Sequencers
- Multiple tracks w/ multiple effects running in Digital Performer; the 'sweeper' seems choppy (GPU?) on the Mac Pro, was very smooth on the G5. I'm getting buffer errors with same settings/config on this machine, but had no buffer playback errors on G5.

- While audio is playing in Logic Pro, levels meters are not keeping up with actual audio. In other words, if there's a kick bass going thump, thump, thump-I'd fully expect the levels meters to jump in time with that thumping, but it does not. It is hard to decipher different tracks from watching those meters. Digital Performer seems to handle this better, but both are choppier than Digital Performer was on the G5. (didn't use Logic Pro on G5)

- Using my keyboard to trigger Virtual Instruments through Mac Pro has less latency than on G5 which was pleasing. Almost no discernible latency on Mac Pro whereas you had to actually account for this lag on G5. More RAM would've likely served the G5 well though.

- Dialing up different virtual instruments in Logic Pro on Mac Pro seems slow to me. The only comparison I have is changing VIs in Propellerhead's Reason sounbanks on my G5. i.e. both equally slow. I would've thought an integrated app like Apple's Logic Pro would be more adept at accessing these banks than a G5 using third-party software such as Reason. Considering I'm using over double the RAM with better/faster processors (Intel's Xeons VS PPCs), I would've thought a substantial difference where there appears to be almost no difference.

Word
- Microsoft Word; even something as simple as changing fonts in a document seems slow like it's accessing another machine for them while on G5 was smooth and quick.

To qualify; I am using a DVI to ADC adaptor as I'm still using the 20" Cinema Display I got with the G5 in 2003.

What are some things I could do that might optimize the performance of my Mac Pro? As it stands today for those things I like doing, I'm not seeing a hands-down difference in performance between my old PPC, dual 2GHz G5 w/ 2gigs of RAM and my new dual, 2.66 GHz Mac Pro w/ 5gigs of RAM.

[shifuimam]

The way I see it, speed is entirely relative.

If you're going 40mph when everyone else is going 20, it's going to feel faster than if everyone else were going 40. Seems like computers are much the same.

I just went from a 466MHz G3 to a 733MHz G4. It seems ridiculously fast compared to my old iBook. I'm surprised that someone said the 1.2GHz G4 they used was "unusably slow for basic tasks" - browsing, word processing, and music on my PowerMac run perfectly fine together. Using the iBook for anything but chat, however, is painful.

It seems to me that both the G4s and the G5s are perfectly respectable machines to continue using for everyday computing. The same can be said of P3 and P4 machines running Windows XP.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

The way I see it, speed is entirely relative.

If you're going 40mph when everyone else is going 20, it's going to feel faster than if everyone else were going 40. Seems like computers are much the same.

I just went from a 466MHz G3 to a 733MHz G4. It seems ridiculously fast compared to my old iBook. I'm surprised that someone said the 1.2GHz G4 they used was "unusably slow for basic tasks" - browsing, word processing, and music on my PowerMac run perfectly fine together. Using the iBook for anything but chat, however, is painful.

It seems to me that both the G4s and the G5s are perfectly respectable machines to continue using for everyday computing. The same can be said of P3 and P4 machines running Windows XP.

Well, a G4 733 IS hugely faster than a G3 466. The G3 466 cannot be used for even basic surfing IMHO. Here's my take on things:

Slow G3: Almost unusable. I got rid of my G3 600 six years ago.
G4 450 Cube: Usable for basic surfing, but you really need a Quartz Extreme GPU to speed things up. However, don't expect to be able to play much embedded video.
G4 800 iBook: Usable for basic surfing but still feels slow. Better with embedded video but still not great.
G4 1.25 iMac: Quite usable for basic surfing and basic office apps, but still feels slow. Embedded video plays even better but still can be problematic, depending on the size and type.
G4 1.7 Cube: Can't say for sure, because my particular one has a slow 100 MHz bus which might cause problems. I can't say it's necessarily faster at the above stuff than my G4 1.25, but it's definitely faster for some stuff.
G5 2.0 iMac: Perfectly fine for surfing and office apps, but not good at multitasking, and Handbrake is painful to use. Aperture is slow.
Dual G5 2.0 Power Mac: Good for surfing and office apps. Reasonable at multitasking, but terrible at Handbrake. With a Radeon 9600, Aperture is slow.
Core Duo 2.0 MacBook: Very good for surfing, multitasking, and office apps, and Handbrake is nice. Aperture is usable but slow. Note that I installed an aftermarket hard drive in 2008 that sped things up. Unfortunately, the 2 GB in my machine was limiting for multitasking.
Core 2 Duo 2.33 iMac: Very good for surfing, multitasking, and office apps, and Handbrake is good. Aperture is reasonable with the 7600 GT. However, in my iMac, the lack of a second internal drive can be limiting, and my 3 GB limit is also limiting.

I really look forward to getting that 4-core iMac, with 4-8 GB RAM. The only thing I'm missing is a second internal drive, but I can live without it.

An 8-core machine (jealous) is a little bit of overkill for me at this time.

[angelmb]

(…) they had me using a 1.8ghz dual G5 with 2 gigs of ram, it was so slow I could barely use it. And all I was doing was web surfing, and a little bit of diagnostic and disc burning work. (…) I can't imagine trying to do any real work on a computer that slow.

Well, that's weird. My Power Mac is way slower than that Dual G5, it is a single CPU 1,25 GHz G4 with 2 GB RAM which still is plenty fast to 'web surfing, disc burning work' and stuff like Office 2004 or Adobe CS2 and QXP7.5, it also runs (and records TV shows from) EyeTV 3 without any issue. All that with the slow core-nothing-capable Radeon 9000 64MB that came with it, but enough to drive the DVI Apple Cinema 23 attached to it. Heck, I even run Visual Basic under VPC 6 and XP Home on such an 'ancient' machine.

Then I also have a Mac Pro 2*2GHz, 8 GB RAM with the nVidia 8800GT attached to a 30" Cinema Display. Needless to say it feels fast like 8.6 felt under a speedy G3… I don't experience that Office 2008 sluggishness someone said albeit I wouldn't say it is way faster than 2004 under the G4. Needless to say VMware is in another league vs. VPC but that is not even a valid comparison. As for browsing… well, Firefox launches noticeably faster but that's all about it, Camino is still faster and Safari is still the fastest one. I guess flash is at last, useable, just go to Stefan Sagmeister's website (beware the browser's window resize) and what under the G4 was s-l-o-w now is psychedelic fast…

So to me, it is pretty much about what your actual needs are. It is not like the G4 or G5 were slow from day one. Do you really need to run Office 2008 under a G4?, I would swear it is not worth the upgrade from 2004 given you have the File Format Converters available as download from mactopia. Do you need to run CS3 under an 'aged' computer?, of course you don't, like I don't need to run CS4 under the Mac Pro just cause it is out.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

To be clear, I've not done any official benchmarking and I wouldn't necessarily be able to tell you the difference between GPU and CPU intensive, [...]

None of the apps you mentioned are GPU-accelerated, so the GPU's not the issue.

What I do wonder is, are all of your apps Universal Binary? Because if you're running PPC-only apps on the Intel, then yes, they will be running slower and with higher latency than on the G5!

[tooki]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

[...] I just went from a 466MHz G3 to a 733MHz G4. It seems ridiculously fast compared to my old iBook. I'm surprised that someone said the 1.2GHz G4 they used was "unusably slow for basic tasks" - browsing, word processing, and music on my PowerMac run perfectly fine together. Using the iBook for anything but chat, however, is painful.

It seems to me that both the G4s and the G5s are perfectly respectable machines to continue using for everyday computing. The same can be said of P3 and P4 machines running Windows XP.

Nobody in this thread, at least, said that a G4 was unusable for basic tasks.

But that said, "everyday" varies a lot by person, too. I tend to have a lot of stuff open -- most of the apps aren't terribly demanding on their own, but when you have 10 running at once, the G4's ability to cope begins to crumble. It's not that it's a bad machine, it just couldn't keep up with me and how I work. Now, with the Mac Pro, I can actually have more stuff going on in the background (like a video encode) and still be able to zip around all the stuff I'm doing.

My fiancé now uses the G4, because it meets his needs readily.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by tooki 

None of the apps you mentioned are GPU-accelerated, so the GPU's not the issue.

What I do wonder is, are all of your apps Universal Binary? Because if you're running PPC-only apps on the Intel, then yes, they will be running slower and with higher latency than on the G5!

Just a small note (although it's not directly related to your post or ebuddy's):

Basic usage on slow machines speeds up noticeably with Quartz Extreme capable GPUs. My Cube is noticeably smoother with a GeForce 6200 (or even a 2 MX) as compared to a Rage 128.

[TomD3]

You have a thread and I'm sure people have read it, please don't cross post the same message everywhere.

Also DON'T post your email address, spam bots WILL harvest it and you will be signed up for lots of spam.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by tooki 

None of the apps you mentioned are GPU-accelerated, so the GPU's not the issue.

Good info, thank you.

What I do wonder is, are all of your apps Universal Binary? Because if you're running PPC-only apps on the Intel, then yes, they will be running slower and with higher latency than on the G5!

Good questions and I'll get to it in a sec, but will PPC-only apps even run on an intel machine? Strange.

Yeah, these are all Universal Binary and in fact I think I've read somewhere, where this might actually be the problem. I've read that if these apps were intel-only, they'd be faster. Is there something else I might do to optimize overall performance? (besides the obvious like... buy a newer machine, more RAM, spending money of any kind... )

[tooki]

Yes, an Intel Mac will run PPC apps. OS X seamlessly launches it under an emulator called Rosetta. But it does slow the app down.

Being Intel-only doesn't help. As long as it's Universal Binary, it's running native. The PPC code present in a UB application is irrelevant (and vice versa on PPC Macs, the Intel code doesn't slow it down). And don't use those apps that strip out the "unnecessary" code for the other platform: the space saved is trivial, but it can cause problems with updates down the line.

[Sealobo]

My Dual 2.0 G5 (with 3 gig of RAM) can NOT do the followings:

1. play HD 1080p movies without dropping more than half the frames. (lol~)
2. render complex websites such as ign.com smoothly.
3. quietly multitask.

furthermore, new software have started dropping ppc support. i think SPORE supports only x86...

Having said that, normal web browsing with iTunes playing is fine.

Ar... and yes, the freaken thing chirps.

[chris v]

I've got a Dual 2.0 G5 with 4 gig of RAM. The other day, a client sent me a 25 mb Illustrator file that just brought the thing to its knees. 25 mb is a lot of vector points, I know, but somehow, this guy managed to do it -- so my job was to go through, find all the hidden objects, delete them, and join as many overlapping objects as possible to try to get it down to something workable. It was nuts -- 5 minutes to open, 15 minutes to save, kept getting out of memory messages when trying to zoom in & out (couldn't display preview after about 5 minutes) & serious lag 5-20 second between clicking an object, or button, or menu and getting a response -- I was pulling my hair out.

So, I tossed the file on my iPod, and ran back to the Print-On-Demand room, where they have a year-old Intel dual dual-core 2.6 Ghz with 5 gig of RAM. Wow -- it loaded in only THREE minutes, and saved in less than 10! and I got almost 10 minutes of frustratingly slow work done before I got the out of memory message, and the file would no longer preview. Mouse-click delays were only 3-5 seconds! Wow! What blazing speed!

Moral of the story -- if your software is a bloated, cruft-laden resource gobbling hog that's not multi-threaded, has restricted access to memory, and only uses one CPU no matter what, (I'm looking at you, Adobe) you're not going to see all that much of an improvement between a good dual G5 and a good Quad-Intel.

And for some things, the G5's are really still amazingly capable, like with a well-coded app, like Logic. I've been working on a multi-track mixing project on weekends -- 24 tracks of audio, multiple effects on every track, automation on the majority of them, and 5 to 6 busses used as effects returns, like echos, and reverbs. I often have 3 or 4 different Space Designer reverbs going, and when I watch the CPU meter while bouncing a mixdown, it doesn't push either CPU much past 25%. So, theoretically, I could hit this thing with 96 tracks of 24-bit audio, 24 busses and 12 Space Designers before it maxed out.

[PwrMac.com]

Originally Posted by Sealobo 

My Dual 2.0 G5 (with 3 gig of RAM) can NOT do the followings:

1. play HD 1080p movies without dropping more than half the frames. (lol~)

Did you see:

http://www.pwrmac.com/2008/10/04/old...80p-just-fine/

in what situation is your 2.0 dropping frames?

[Sealobo]

Originally Posted by PwrMac.com 

Did you see:

http://www.pwrmac.com/2008/10/04/old...80p-just-fine/

in what situation is your 2.0 dropping frames?

I just went to Apple.com to play the Changeling HD trailer (1920*816) and from the inspector the frame rate of the clip is 23.98.... my choppy playback dropped to 14-17fps for the entire clip.

If i play any 1920*1080 materials... the clip would not be viewable. it gets like 5fps.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Sealobo 

I just went to Apple.com to play the Changeling HD trailer (1920*816) and from the inspector the frame rate of the clip is 23.98.... my choppy playback dropped to 14-17fps for the entire clip.

I have to admit that my frame rate does indeed drop to as low as 14 FPS on 1080 AAC QuickTime trailers during high action. It depends on the trailer, but in general that's true.

If i play any 1920*1080 materials... the clip would not be viewable. it gets like 5fps.

True enough for QuickTime AAC movie trailers, but for HD content in general that's not accurate. It depends on the codec used. I can play 1920x1080- Apple Intermediate Codec files generated by my Canon HV20 at full 30FPS without any issues (and about half processor utilization).

[chadpengar]

My day to day machine is a dual 2.5 G5 with 7GB memory. It has a 30" screen and a 20" screen

I have a Mac Pro 3.0 8 core machine with 16gb and with 2x30" and a 23" screens sitting next to it. I also have a few intel minis of various generations and a Mac Book Pro dual core 2.4 or something like that speed.

The G5 gets my day to day use. Email, simple photoshop, web browsing, accounting/order processing, etc.

I compile on the Mac Pro, and do any DVD ripping on it. It is much faster at that stuff. But the G5 is fine for most people's day to day work. Still. After almost 4 years of sitting on my desk.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

Audio Sequencers
- Multiple tracks w/ multiple effects running in Digital Performer; the 'sweeper' seems choppy (GPU?) on the Mac Pro, was very smooth on the G5. I'm getting buffer errors with same settings/config on this machine, but had no buffer playback errors on G5.

Are you running v 5.1.3 or later?

Earlier versions were ****ed under Leopard.

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

- While audio is playing in Logic Pro, levels meters are not keeping up with actual audio. In other words, if there's a kick bass going thump, thump, thump-I'd fully expect the levels meters to jump in time with that thumping, but it does not. It is hard to decipher different tracks from watching those meters. Digital Performer seems to handle this better, but both are choppier than Digital Performer was on the G5. (didn't use Logic Pro on G5)

That's very odd, because Logic 8 is absolutely butter-smooth on my lowly MacBook. Meters are completely responsive and everything visual works *exactly* the way I'd expect it to.

Might there be something wrong with your system? Bad plug-in, older audio driver, something?

Originally Posted by ebuddy 

- Dialing up different virtual instruments in Logic Pro on Mac Pro seems slow to me. The only comparison I have is changing VIs in Propellerhead's Reason sounbanks on my G5. i.e. both equally slow. I would've thought an integrated app like Apple's Logic Pro would be more adept at accessing these banks than a G5 using third-party software such as Reason. Considering I'm using over double the RAM with better/faster processors (Intel's Xeons VS PPCs), I would've thought a substantial difference where there appears to be almost no difference.

That's because dialling up sound banks is almost *entirely* disk activity - it's reading the samples from your hard disk; virtually no CPU involved in that.

Dialling up any virtual instrument that isn't sample-based (e.g. ES1, EVP88) ranges from *instant* to well under a second on my machine (just testing all of this as I write this).

Originally Posted by chris v 

And for some things, the G5's are really still amazingly capable, like with a well-coded app, like Logic. I've been working on a multi-track mixing project on weekends -- 24 tracks of audio, multiple effects on every track, automation on the majority of them, and 5 to 6 busses used as effects returns, like echos, and reverbs. I often have 3 or 4 different Space Designer reverbs going, and when I watch the CPU meter while bouncing a mixdown, it doesn't push either CPU much past 25%. So, theoretically, I could hit this thing with 96 tracks of 24-bit audio, 24 busses and 12 Space Designers before it maxed out.

Actually, Logic is MUCH better-coded since they tossed the old core and re-did it for Logic Pro 8 and Intel.

And running a project with 24 tracks (track count isn't a factor of CPU power, btw), 8 busses, and 12 Space Designers (and countless other hungry fx plug-ins like Delay Designer etc.) on it eats between 85-90% of 200% max CPU power on this two-year-old 2 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook.

Which cost about a third of a high-end G5 PowerMac.




The G5 systems certainly hold up well, and they're grand machines, but there is absolutely no doubt that for heavy lifting, they are completely outclassed by the Mac Pro.

[BurpetheadX]

I just sold my Dual 2.0 G5 two months ago, but it was a fantastic machine that DID hold it's own by todays standards. With my 10,000 RPM Raptor drive, it ran just as fast current dual-core intel machines. The G5's can still do everything the Intel's can, just can't crunch the hard numbers as fast.

I think they should be supported for Snow Leopard as a final breath.